CAREER TRAJECTORIES OF REGIONAL OFFICIALS: RUSSIA AND … · 2020. 10. 23. · regarded as forming...

Thomas F. Remington, Andrei A. Yakovlev,

Elena Ovchinnikova, Alexander Chasovsky

CAREER TRAJECTORIES OF

REGIONAL OFFICIALS:

RUSSIA AND CHINA BEFORE AND

AFTER 2012

BASIC RESEARCH PROGRAM

WORKING PAPERS

SERIES: POLITICAL SCIENCE

WP BRP 74/PS/2020

This Working Paper is an output of a research project implemented within NRU HSE’s Annual Thematic Plan for Basic

and Applied Research. Any opinions or claims contained in this Working Paper do not necessarily reflect the views of

HSE

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Thomas F. Remington1, Andrei A. Yakovlev2,

Elena Ovchinnikova3, Alexander Chasovsky4

CAREER TRAJECTORIES OF REGIONAL OFFICIALS:

RUSSIA AND CHINA BEFORE AND AFTER 201256

Abstract: Authoritarian leaders rely on regional officials for both political support and the fulfillment

of their policy objectives. Central leaders face trade-offs between using institutionalized rules for

choosing regional officials such as regular rotation and performance incentives, and building a stable

base of personal support from loyalists. This paper analyzes appointments of regional officials in

Russia and China before and after 2012. We hypothesize that, as a consequence of the centralization

and personalization of state power in both regimes over the past decade, Russia’s system for

appointing regional officials has become somewhat more regularized while in China under Xi it has

become somewhat less regularized. Our analysis uses a comprehensive original set of biographical

data on all top regional officials from 2002 through 2019 in China and from 2000 through 2019 in

Russia. We discern clear differences between the pre- and post-2012 period for China and less marked

differences for pre- and post-2012 Russia.

JEL Classification: P21, H83, P27

Keywords: bureaucracy under authoritarian government; regional officials; career mobility; Russia;

China

1 Department of Political Science, Emory University, Atlanta, USA; International Center for the

Study of Institutions and Development, National Research University - Higher School of

Economics, Moscow, Russia; e-mail: [email protected] 2 Institute for Industrial and Market Studies & International Center for the Study of Institutions and

Development, National Research University - Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia; e-

mail: [email protected] 3 Institute for Industrial and Market Studies & International Center for the Study of Institutions and

Development, National Research University - Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia; e-

mail: [email protected] 4 Institute for Industrial and Market Studies, National Research University - Higher School of

Economics, Moscow, Russia; e-mail: [email protected] 5 Authors are grateful to Noah Buckley, Bryn Rosenfeld and Michael Rochlitz as well as to participants of ICSID conference in June

2020, APSA annual convention in September 2020 and ICSID-QoG workshop in October 2020 for useful comments and remarks.

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1. Introduction: New leaders, new rules?

Political and economic performance in authoritarian polities depends critically upon the

ability of regional executives to fulfill policy objectives set by the central leaders. At the same time,

top regime leaders rely on those same regional officials for political support. Communist regimes

employ a highly-structured set of procedures—the nomenklatura system-- to groom, evaluate, and

appoint officials to top positions in the bureaucracy. In other authoritarian systems, rules guiding

appointments of regional officials are typically less formal. In all authoritarian systems, central

leaders face trade-offs, however, between reliance on institutionalized rules for choosing regional

leaders as opposed to allowing the top leader free rein to build a personal base of support. Some

authoritarian systems may apply regularized rules such as age and term limits in recruiting officials.

Alternatively, they may leave officials in place for long periods of time (a case in point is Brezhnev’s

“stability of cadres” policy in the USSR, which contributed to the stagnation and collapse of the

regime).

Communist regimes handle the selection of officials in a highly regularized fashion. Its

mechanism is the “nomenklatura” system, where nomenklatura refers to a set of leading positions

throughout the state and society—political officials of all kinds, economic managers, senior officers

in the armed services and police, heads of media, educational, cultural organizations, and so on. There

are corresponding lists of people who have been cleared to fill these positions. At every level of the

bureaucratic hierarchy, there is a set of leadership positions filling which requires either appointment

by, or at least approval by, the relevant organizational committee of the communist party. (On the

nomenklatura system, see Harasymiw 1984; Rigby and Harasymiw 1983). In the Soviet and East

European communist regimes, people who were appointed to nomenklatura positions were popularly

regarded as forming a privileged stratum often called, collectively, “the nomenklatura” (Voslensky

1984). Party officials used the nomenklatura to develop extensive personal networks of clients, who

in turn maintained their own clienteles. The nomenklatura system allowed personal as well as

bureaucratic factions to flourish, and certainly did nothing to deter the accumulation of stasis and

inertia under Brezhnev that resulted in the system’s fatal rigidity as the senior leadership remained

entrenched in power without turnover.

Russia and China form a particularly useful pair of cases for comparison with respect to the

operation of cadre management systems. Notwithstanding the immense differences between them,

both regimes inherited the nomenklatura system although Russia has scrapped many elements of it

after the end of communist party rule. Both are large—one the largest country in the world by

territory, the other by population--so the central government faces extremely demanding span of

control challenges. Both are highly centralized and have become more so over the past decade.

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Therefore the divergence between them with respect to the formal rules governing the appointment

of regional state officials affords us an opportunity to ask whether this divergence has mattered for

observed patterns of career movements. Moreover—puzzlingly, given the common origins of the

systems of appointments of regional officials—almost no studies exist comparing patterns of career

movement in these two countries. The large literature on official careers in Chinese case makes

almost no reference to the large literature on the Soviet parallels, focusing heavily instead on the

question of the degree to which economic performance as opposed to factional affiliation influence

career trajectories. The current literature on Russian regional officials’ appointments and dismissals

makes no reference to the Chinese case.

The Soviet nomenklatura system had a direct bearing on the seeming stability and ultimate

collapse of the Soviet regime. In its ideal form, the Soviet system balanced central control with

accountability. In a process known as the “circular flow of power,” the party’s General Secretary,

working through the Secretariat of the Central Committee, appointed regional party secretaries.

These leaders (first secretaries of the oblast’ party committees in the Russian Republic and of the

national republics making up the federal union) in turn controlled the selection of delegates to the

CPSU party congresses every five years. These congresses in turn “elected” –that is, they ratified a

slate proposed to them by the secretariat—the members of the Central Committee, the Politburo, and

the General Secretary. Although this process was highly centralized, it also necessarily

accommodated the political interests of the regional and republican power blocs comprising the party.

In return for supporting the General Secretary in power, the party leaders who operated party

organizations in their regions and republics had considerable discretion to build their own clienteles.

The circular flow of power consequently provided a kind of reciprocal accountability between the

regional party leaders (especially taken as a latent bloc of power) and the top party leader: he had to

maintain their support, even as he also dominated the process by which they were chosen to their

posts (see Zimmerman 2016). When Leonid Brezhnev pushed Nikita Khrushchev out of power in

1964, Brezhnev promised lower party officials that they could expect stable, predictable procedures

for decision-making, based on collective leadership, as a reaction against Khrushchev’s arbitrary,

impetuous, and personalistic leadership style, and that they would not be subjected to capricious

removals from power by the top leader. However, as Brezhnev aged, his “stability of cadres”

principle became a significant liability to the system’s survival. Local party officials’ upward career

mobility was blocked, and the absence of leadership turnover meant the party became increasingly

unable to respond meaningfully to deep-rooted policy problems such as secular decline in economic

productivity. Brezhnev’s principle—“stability of cadres”—turned into the ultimately fatal stagnation

and collapse of the regime (Roeder 1993).

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For its part, China underwent an entirely different kind of systemic crisis in the 1960s and

1970s. If the Soviet problem was that stability turned into stagnation, in China, Mao Zedong himself

rejected stability in favor of the violent chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Arbitrary arrests,

demotions, and imprisonment of leading party officials became common. Deng Xiaoping himself was

sent down to the countryside in 1969; then after his rehabilitation he was once again suspended from

all his positions in 1976 as the “Gang of Four” continued Mao’s campaign against the restoration of

institutional order. Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, a first generation revolutionary leader and

senior party leader, was demoted in 1965, then jailed during the Cultural Revolution. China’s party

leaders thoroughly understand the dangers of excessive and arbitrary treatment of party leaders, as

well as the dangers of allowing regional leaders to remain in power too long. The breakdown of order

within the party was a major reason party cadres supported Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to establish rules

such as age and term limits, and to reject personalistic leadership in favor of collective leadership

(Vogel 2011).

In 2012 both Russia and China underwent significant leadership changes. Vladimir Putin

returned to the presidency after the four-year presidential term of his close comrade Dmitrii

Medvedev. In November of the same year Xi Jinping was named CCP General Secretary at the 18th

Party Congress. We conjecture, accordingly, that 2012 marked a point when the two regimes’ policies

for managing regional official’s careers began to undergo a tendency toward convergence. In Russia,

under presidents Yeltsin and Putin, the top leader freely overrode formal term limits for governors

(this was the case both when governors were elected for nominal terms of office and when governors

were appointed by the president). Some governors stayed in office for as long as 20 years and more

while others served for extremely short times before being removed. Under Deng Xiaoping, China

established much stricter rules for the length of terms of office and the ages at which officials must

be removed. We describe these rules in greater detail below.

At the point of the leadership change in both countries in 2012, both countries had been

experiencing rising political and economic pressures. In part, these resulted from the global financial

crisis of 2008-2009 which brought about a sharp fall (nearly 9% in 2009) in GDP in Russia and forced

China to respond with a major surge of state-led infrastructure spending to maintain liquidity. In

Russia, GDP growth took until 2014-2015 to recover. In China, the government’s infusion of state

resources into financial institutions and state industrial enterprises maintained economic growth rates

but also revealed the degree to which the economy depended on exports, investment and state

infrastructure spending to keep incomes rising.

Moreover, both countries faced political tensions at the leadership level. In China, these

resulted in the postponement of the 18th Party Congress by several weeks. Observers connected this

unexplained delay to the severe factional in-fighting associated with the Bo Xilai affair. Evidently

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Xi Jinping needed to consolidate his support within the party before the congress could be convened

(Dotson 2012). In Russia, unexpectedly large-scale public protests over election falsification in the

2011-2012 election cycle revealed widespread discontent in many major cities (Reuter and Szakonyi

2013; Dollbaum 2017). In 2013-14, the Ukrainian crisis, followed by the annexation of Crimea, was

used by Putin to mobilize patriotic sentiment as a means of raising popular support for the regime.

However, falling real income growth, accelerated by the drop in world oil prices (spot prices for Brent

oil fell from around $100 per barrel in summer 2014 to $51 in January 2015), severely strained state

finances. Coupled with Western economic sanctions over Crimea, these pushed Russia into economic

crisis again. In China, by the beginning of the 2010’s, economic growth had begun to slow and the

exhaustion of the model of export-, investment- and infra-structure-led economic growth had become

increasingly evident to Chinese policy-makers (Naughton 2018). Xi responded by demanding that

government officials reduce the emphasis given to GDP growth for its own sake and increase the

value-added from scientific and technological modernization.

We believe that these pressures help explain the similar trends toward centralization and

personalization of power in the two regimes that became particularly pronounced after 2012. In both

cases they reflect a modification of the previous norms governing regional officials’ careers.

Centralization refers to two processes: first, the concentration of state power at the central level at the

expense of the power of regional governments, and second, a weakening of the autonomy of other

centers of power in the economy and society. Both regimes have increasingly come to rely on state-

owned enterprises to serve as “national champions” and engines of growth. Both also have tightened

fiscal control and reduced fiscal autonomy of regional governments. Personalization refers to the

tendency to limit power-sharing and collective forms of decision-making and to establish the top

leader personally as the sole source of authority in the state.

We hypothesize that the centralization and personalization of power in the two regimes have

resulted in a certain convergence between them with regard to the practices governing the

appointments of regional officials. In both countries the top leaders adopted policies that allowed

them to remove and replace top regional officials more rapidly as well as to a tendency to appoint

outsiders to these positions, that is, officials who were not tied to the region and therefore more

dependent on the center.

To test this hypothesis, we collected biographical data on all officials who served as regional

chief executives from 2000 through the end of 2019 in Russia and from 2002 through the end of 2019

in China, including all individuals who served as party secretaries as well as those serving as

governors. For each individual we calculate age at appointment, length of time in office, and type of

subsequent career step. In certain respects, the paper builds on our earlier research on this subject

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(Rochlitz et al. 2015) by incorporating movements since 2012. Below we provide details on the

variables used.

2. Previous literature

The question of how authoritarian regimes manage appointments of regional officials,

evaluate performance, and provide incentives to influence the behavior of regional officials has been

studied extensively in the context of individual countries, but comparative studies are rare. A

substantial literature has developed examining the determinants of career patterns among Chinese

officials. Much of the literature has addressed the question of the degree to which political

connections—such as membership in a factional network—as opposed to success in managing

economic policy facilitates career movement (Zhang 2014; Nathan and Gilley 2003; Zeng 2013;

Landry et al. 2015; Ma et al. 2015; Xi et al. 2015; Shih et al. 2012; Chen et al. 2005; Jia et al. 2015;

Li and Zhou 2005; Choi 2012; Manion 1985; Shih et al. 2010). We do not review that literature here.

There is a smaller literature on the determinants of gubernatorial appointments in Russia (Reuter and

Buckley 2019; Buckley et al. 2014; Reuter and Robertson 2012). Almost no studies compare Russia

and China with respect to the factors influencing the career movements of regional officials despite

the fact that both regimes have adapted modified versions of the Soviet system for managing

appointments. One exception is Rochlitz et al. 2015. This paper seeks to build on that study in the

light of the coming to power of Xi Jinping in 2012 and Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in

2012.

Russia and China offer starkly contrasting cases of the management of regional officials. At

least during the 30-year era of “reform and opening up,” China’s central government pressed its

regional executives—governors and party secretaries as well as officials at lower administrative

levels --to maximize economic growth (Maskin et al. 2000; Chen et al. 2005; Li and Zhou 2005;

Landry et al. 2018). For officials at higher levels, promotion was also affected by factional ties as

well as education and revenue collection (Jia, Kudamatsua and Seim 2013; Shih, Adolph and Liu

2012; Landry, Lü and Duan 2018). In contrast, studies of Russia have emphasized the importance of

regional officials’ political loyalty to President Putin and the Putin regime as the dominant factor

influencing an official’s career opportunities, as indicated by the official’s success to maximizing

electoral support for the president and the United Russia party (Reuter and Robertson 2012; Reisinger

and Morasky 2013).

Rochlitz et al. (2015) analyzed the career trajectories of all officials who had served as

regional executives in Russia and China between 1999 and 2012: 205 individuals who had served as

governors in Russia, and 201 governors and party secretaries in China. Rochlitz et al. (2015) mapped

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their career paths onto a series of performance indicators that the literature had indicated as being

important criteria for evaluation used by the center. Rochlitz et al. (2015) found that in Russia,

regional executives had lower turnover, were sometimes removed but almost never promoted to a

higher position (such as a federal minister), were not rewarded for good economic results but were

sometimes removed for poor political (electoral) outcomes. In contrast to China, there were few

incentives for achieving good economic results or engaging in policy experimentation intended to

bring favorable attention to their leadership. In China, by contrast, regional executives were regularly

moved, sometime promoted and sometimes retired, had more prior executive experience, and were

constrained by strictly observed age and term limits.

Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 after a four-year term as prime minister

occurred at a relatively tumultuous moment in Russia. The elections to the Duma in December 2011

had been accompanied by exceptionally large-scale protest against electoral fraud and against Putin’s

return to the presidency. The December wave of protest was followed by further protests in early

2012. Putin’s approval ratings began to slide as the economy shrank, from a high point of 86% in

April 2008 to 61% in December 2011. Approval continued to decline until spring 2014 when Russia

annexed Crimea, bringing a strong rebound in his approval. Moreover, real incomes were falling as

a result of lower oil prices, Western economic sanctions over the annexation of Crimea, and the

weakness of domestic sources of growth.

In the face of these political and economic pressures, President Putin intensified political

repression of real and perceived opponents following his inauguration in 2012 and increased the

degree to which the regime was based on his personal power and patronage (Baturo and Elkink 2016,

2014). The personalization of power was neatly captured by Vyacheslav Volodin’s aperçu that “if

there’s no Putin there’s no Russia.” In March 2020, Putin pushed through constitutional amendments

that would allow him to seek yet another two terms as president when his current term ends in 2024,

potentially allowing him to continue in power through 2036. To give the change a semblance of

popular legitimacy, he called for a nationwide vote to approve the changes. This vote—formally not

treated as a referendum—was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, but was finally held over a seven-

day period culminating June 1, 2020. The authorities mounted an intense campaign of efforts to

ensure high turnout and strong support for the amendments. Following the vote, the electoral

commission reported that almost 68% of eligible voters participated and over 77% approved the

amendments. If Putin chooses to avail himself of the option of serving a fifth term as president, he

would be 72 years at its beginning.

Xi Jinping will be even younger – 69 – at the point when his second term as General Secretary

ends in 2022. Xi has given strong indications that he intends to retain power well past that date. In

March 2018, the National People’s Congress eliminated the constitutional clause limiting the

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president and vice-president to two five-year terms. This move was widely interpreted as a signal

that Xi intended to stay on as general secretary beyond two terms, in view of the fact that general

secretaries usually also simultaneously hold the position of state president. A senior party official

commented at the same time that the former rule, qishang baxia (“seven up, eight down,” meaning

that a senior official could move up at age 67, but age 68 should bring retirement) was no longer

operative. He called it a “popular saying” that “isn’t trustworthy.”7 There were other indications as

well that Xi intended to scrap the former constraints on a general secretary’s power. Whether this

change will also affect the career patterns for regional officials remains to be seen.

Like Putin, Xi has consolidated personal power very quickly since 2012. After being elected

general secretary at the 18th Party Congress in November 2012, Xi soon began to assume a number

of positions of policy leadership in defense and security, economic policy-making, and party

management. He took over leadership of many working small groups that had traditionally been

occupied by the prime minister. At the same time he undertook a massive campaign to purge the

party of corruption which has continued since. Although many of the targets of the campaign were

people associated with rival factions, the campaign left almost no sector untouched. Moreover, Xi

tightened centralization and ideological control within the party and significantly reduced the degree

of policy autonomy exercised by provincial and lower governments (Heilmann 2018). Among the

many symbolic indicators of the personalization of power are the fact that he placed his own signature

ideological contribution—“Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New

Era”—into the party’s constitution, and the increasing use of the term “People’s Leader” (renmin

lingxiu) for Xi by the PLA and the Ministry of State Security. In the symbol-rich environment of

Chinese rhetoric, this plebiscitarian title directly signifies a lessening of the institutional authority of

the party and of the other members of the senior leadership. It is clear that Xi has amassed greater

personal power than any leader since Mao Zedong at the expense of the post-Deng principle of

collective leadership.

Xi’s willingness to abandon the strong norm of rotation for the top leader raises the question

of whether he would also relax restrictions on age and term limits for lower-level leaders. These rules

were established by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s. Deng established new conventions about

leadership turnover: the top party leader and lower-ranking party and government leaders should

serve no more than two terms; senior leaders should retire by age 68; provincial-level party secretaries

face the same age restrictions; governors should not serve past age 65. Regional party and

government officials also faced an “up or out” rule. Once they finished two terms in the same post,

regional officials were not to be appointed to a new position at the same level. Of course they could

7 https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/11/01/for-chinas-leaders-age-cap-is-but-a-moving-number/

https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/11/01/for-chinas-leaders-age-cap-is-but-a-moving-number/

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be moved to an honorific position, such as a post in a committee of the National People’s Congress

or the People’s Political Consultative Conference if they had not fallen from grace (Li 2012; 党政领

导干部退休年龄规定 2006).

Consequently, given that Xi Jinping appears to have eliminated term limits for himself, in this

paper we investigate the degree to which these rules have been relaxed for those he appoints to leading

regional positions. As Libman and Rochlitz observe, if Xi eliminates term limits for central-level

officials, he may thereby weaken incentives for good performance by regional officials, since they

will see their opportunities for upward mobility constricted (Libman and Rochlitz 2019, pp. 68-9).

This paper accordingly compares the post-2012 patterns of career management with the pre-

2012 patterns in the two countries. We examine the data on appointments and career changes for

regional officials, both party secretaries and governors, testing whether age and term-related rules

continue to guide career movement. We have several expectations. For each country, we expect to

observe a certain amount of house-cleaning in 2012, as presidents Xi and Putin used their appointment

powers to build a base of support among regional leaders. Beyond that, however, we examine whether

the average ages at the time of appointment, the duration of service in office, rates of turnover, the

share of “outsiders” (that is, officials who lacked previous work experience in the region), and

patterns of promotion, demotion, retirement, and so on, following a replacement. If we are right, and

the two regimes have converged somewhat in their career management systems for regional officials,

we would expect to observe more frequent turnover of officials in both systems, a younger average

age of newly appointed officials, and a higher number of outsiders appointed to leadership posts.

3. Research design

We have attempted to apply the same coding rules for career movements to the two countries

as much as possible. However, the institutional differences between them require making some

adjustments to the coding scheme. In particular, Chinas has retained the dualistic structure of

governors and party secretaries in which governors bear principal authority for managing economic

and social policy whereas party secretaries –much like the Soviet “prefects”—oversee all aspects of

state power and ensure the fulfillment of the center’s top political priorities (cf Hough 1969). For

that reason, we use a code category for governors reflecting the fact that the appointment of a governor

of a Chinese province-level unit to the position of party secretary in the same or different region is a

clear promotion. For Russia, there is no such promotion available for a regional governor; the only

available upward move for a governor is an appointment to a high-ranking central level post. We are

also constrained by data availability, which differs somewhat between the two countries.

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a. China

For China, we have collected biographical data on all top regional officials who occupied the

positions of a province CPC secretary, a province governor, chair of the regional government in an

autonomous region or mayor of a municipality of central subordination in the period from 2002 to

2019. Our overall dataset contains data on 208 persons who occupied these positions in 22 provinces,

5 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities under the direct administration of central government.

In the Chinese bureaucratic system, two officials—a party secretary and a governor—are

regional leaders, but the party secretary has a higher status. Therefore, transfer from the position of a

governor to the position of a party secretary has traditionally been viewed as a promotion. However,

these positions have different functions and different performance criteria, and the literature has

already described differences in career trajectories of governors and party secretaries. Therefore we

divided our sample into two sub-samples including 161 observations for governors and 117

observations for party secretaries, and conducted further analysis of those two sub-samples. It is

noteworthy that more than half (70 individuals) of party secretaries previously held the post of

governor.

The following biographical data were collected for each official: year of birth; year of first

appointment to the position of a governor or party secretary; year in which an individual received a

subsequent promotion to a higher-ranking position at the regional level; and year of final departure

from the position of governor or party secretary of a province. These data were used to calculate each

official’s age of appointment to and removal from each senior position at the regional level and the

tenure of each regional office. In addition, we gathered information about the place of birth and

previous places of work, about positions to which the officials were transferred after their service at

the regional level, and about the termination of a career (ie whether it was due to natural causes

(death) or because of a criminal investigation of a corruption-related case).

The use of these data helped identify “outsiders” (officials who had no connections with the

region to which they were appointed) and the types of career movements. In contrast to previous

studies, we did not restrict our research to a simple distinction between promotions and demotions,

but rather employed a more detailed classification. In particular, we separated appointments at the

regional level, including first appointment, transfer to another region and promotions at the regional

level (for governors), transfers to central government positions, including promotions and transfers

without promotion, and appointments to final positions in an official’s political career, including

appointments to positions of high prestige but without any real executive responsibilities (“honorific

retirements”), retirement, dismissal, demotion, and criminal prosecution for corruption. Death while

in office was classified into a separate category. In addition, those officials who remained in their

positions in any given year were identified.

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The type of transfer was established on the basis of comping the next position held by a

regional official to his previous position. The category of “regional promotion” was used for

governors in any case when a governor was appointed as party secretary in the same or different

region.

Appointment to a senior position at the central level (e.g., ministries, leading small groups,

etc.) was coded as a promotion. Appointment to a less important position at the central level while

retaining CPC Central Committee membership was categorized as “transfer to the center without

promotion.” CPC CC membership is one of the key markers of high political status for officials

transferred to the center. For example, an official appointed deputy chair of a committee in the

National People’s Congress who retained membership in the CPC CC at a regular Party Congress

was considered “transferred to the center.” On the other hand, we classified appointments to posts in

the National People’s Congress or the People’s Political Consultative Conference, for example as

chairs of standing committees, as honorific retirements.

Officials who were officially dismissed are categorized as dismissed officials. Officials who

left their positions in connection with corruption-related scandals were placed into a separate

category. However, officials who were accused of corruption after they left the region were not so

coded since there was no evidence the corruption charges were related to the departure.

An official was considered retired if after his resignation there was no information indicating

that he was assigned to another position. Those who were appointed to a lower-ranking position were

regarded as demoted. During the period under survey, three officials died while discharging their

official functions in a region. Their career data were used for establishing the average age of

appointment but were not taken into account for calculating the tenure and analyzing career

movements.

Further analysis was conducted as follows. Two basic periods were identified: the rule of Hu

Jintao and Wen Jiabao (2003-2012) and the rule of Xi Jinping (2013–). We ended the data collection

with the end of 2019. The comparison of career paths of senior regional officials in those two periods

makes possible an evaluation of the changes in China’s cadre management system after 2012.

The temporal periods are defined this way because the positions of a party secretary and a

province governor are high-ranking positions, the appointment to which involves a lengthy procedure

of approvals by central party bodies. In this connection we assumed that the relatively small number

of appointments in regions at the end of 2012 that occurred after Xi Jinping was elected CPC General

Secretary were prepared in the period when Hu Jintao was still general secretary, whereas Xi

Jinping’s appointees are those who became party secretaries or province governors in 2013 or later.

Similarly, we assigned the appointments of late 2002 (when Hu Jintao was elected CPC General

Secretary at the 16th Party Congress) to the previous administration of Jiang Zemin.

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Crucial features of the Chinese cadre management system include age restrictions for various

types of positions and tenure restrictions. Therefore we examine the age of regional officials at the

moment of their appointment and during their further career movements. Based on our analysis of

each group of officials for each year, then averaged over each leadership period, we calculated:

• average age at the time of the first appointment and subsequent moves;

• average tenure of each regional-level position for those appointed to it during the given time

period;

• average shares of those who were first appointed to a position of the given category, those

who remained in their position, and those who were transferred to other positions in the given year;

• average share of officials who had no connections with the region to which they were

appointed.

Based on these figures, we compared the level of stability vs. turnover of cadres among the

senior regional bureaucracy under Xi Jinping with that in Hu and Wen period. We consider changes

in the age of appointment to and dismissal from positions; average tenure of office; frequency of

personnel renewal and rotation; and changes in patterns of subsequent career trajectories of governors

and party secretaries. We also used as a benchmark the same indicators for the group of governors

and party secretaries who occupied their positions at the end of 2002 and thus were Jiang Zemin’s

appointees. We also analyze for each of the two main leadership periods the career trajectories of

officials appointed under the previous and current General Secretaries. We have also separately

examined the group of party secretaries and governors who were in office at the end of 2019, and

used it as the basis for calculating the average tenure, in order to verify that our calculations for of

the transferred officials during the Xi Jinping period are not biased by right-censoring. Additionally,

we also separately considered the effects of temporary delays between removals of officials and the

appointment of their replacements.

b. Russia

For Russia we have gathered biographical data for 304 governors who served in this position

in the period from January 2000 through December 2019. Three periods were identified within this

time span. The period from January 2000 to April 2008 covers the first and second terms of Vladimir

Putin as president. The period from May 2008 to April 2012 is the time of Dmitry Medvedev’s

presidency. The period from May 2012 to December 2019 covers the third and fourth presidential

terms of Vladimir Putin.

The following data were gathered for each governor: year of birth, year of appointment, year

of completion of the term in office, as well as information on the place of birth, place of first higher

education, previous work experience and activity after completion of the term in office. Based on this

information and applying the same approach was was used during the collection and analysis of data

13

on China, we have calculated the age of appointment, age of dismissal and tenure in respect of Russian

governors for each year and for the periods under study, and the share of “outsider” governors who

have no ties to the region. In addition, we employed a typology of career movements of governors

equivalent to the classification used for the PRC. This comprised the following categories: promotion,

appointment as governor in a different region, movement to the federal center to a position of

equivalent level, appointment to honorific positions without real executive powers (“honorific

retirements”), demotion, end of career without visible problems, dismissal with problems, dismissal

due to criminal prosecution.

Appointment to senior positions in the federal government (ministerial post or higher) or the

presidential administration (department head or higher) or the State Duma and the Federation Council

(deputy chair or higher) was considered a promotion. Honorific pension means an appointment to a

post equivalent to the position of a Federation Council member adjusted for the age of the transferred

governor. The category of demotion included governors appointed to less prestigious public positions

after resignation. Such a position could be an assistant or deputy presidential envoy in a federal

district, assistant to the head of the presidential administration, or a deputy minister. Governors who

retired upon the expiration of their terms of office and engaged in business or public activities were

coded as officials who completed their bureaucratic careers without problems. If a governor’s

resignation was accompanied by conflicts at the regional or federal level, including criminal

investigations against his or her subordinates, or if a governor was fired due to “loss of confidence”

but without a criminal case being initiated against him or her personally, such cases were assigned

the category of “dismissals with problems.” All criminal cases against governors were placed into a

separate category, even if the cases were initiated after resignation. Another category included

governors who left their position for natural causes (death) or who stayed in their position for less

than one year. Data on this group of governors were taken into account during analysis of new

appointments but were not included in the calculation of average tenure or age.

Consistent with these procedures, we compiled a dataset of 310 observations for 304

governors. Governors Tolokonsky, Khloponin, and Merkushkin are counted twice because they

occupied the posts of governors of two different regions during the period from 2000 to 2019. For the

same reason, governor Kozhemyako was counted four times. The total number of transfers during the

entire period was 225, and 222 were new appointments. We also standardized all data by taking into

account the change in the number of regions due to consolidation of several regions in the 2000s and

accession of Crimea and Sevastopol in 2014. The final figures are: 89 regions in 2000–2005, 88—in

2006, 86—in 2007, 83—in 2008–2013, and 85—since 2014.

For each year from 2000 through 2019 we calculated:

14

• The absolute number of newly appointed and transferred governors and those who stayed in

place

• Normalized appointment and transfer rates for each category

• Average age and tenure of governors

• The share of outsiders among newly appointed governors and governors who stayed in place.

These data were then aggregated for the three selected periods (January 2000 – April 2008,

May 2008 – April 2012, May 2012 – December 2019).

The governors were divided into four cohorts: those who were appointed during Yeltsin’s rule

and continued service after January 2000, those who were elected or appointed during Putin’s first

two presidential terms, Medvedev’s appointees, and those appointed or elected during Putin’s third

and fourth presidencies. For each cohort, we calculated:

• The number of transferred governors in each cohort

• The average age and tenure of the transferred governors

• The average age of governors who stayed in place at the beginning of each period

• The average age of transferred governors at the time of their appointment

Additionally, we analyzed the age distribution of the newly appointed governors at the time

of their appointment.

Note that we treat both elected and appointed governors as if they were appointed. Given the

extensive controls that the Kremlin exercises over the selection and removal of governors, whether

there is an election or not tends to be a formality. Although the regime restored the system of

gubernatorial elections in 2012 (from 2004 through 2011, governors were appointed), it also

preserved the president’s right to remove and replace a sitting governor on any of a set of vaguely

enumerated grounds (see DeBardeleben and Zherebtsov 2014). A governor who is elected against the

wishes of the Kremlin can readily be dismissed on the grounds that the president has lost confidence

in him or in connection with criminal charges developed for the occasion. A case in point is Sergei

Furgal, elected governor of Khabarovsk region in 2018. Furgal won by a wide margin, defeating a

candidate from United Russia. However, a few weeks after Khabarovsk’s voters gave an

insufficiently robust level of support to the constitutional amendments vote in June 2020, President

Putin dismissed Furgal owing to “loss of confidence” and the procuracy charged him with organizing

contract murders dating back to the early 2000s. Putin then appointed a successor (triggering large-

scale, protracted popular protest in the region). Therefore, although gubernatorial elections were

restored in 2012, the president demonstrated that he could overturn their results at will.

15

4. Main Results

We summarize our results as follows:

4.1 China

• Governors were rotated frequently. An average of 26.6% of new people are appointed

governors every year. Moreover, the rate of new appointments rose from the early period (2003-2012)

to the latter period (2012-2019) from 24.2% to 26.7% (p = 0.000).

• At the same time, the share of governors who stayed in their positions also grew slightly:

from 61.3% in 2003–2012 to 70% in 2013–2019 (p = 0.000).

• However, this effect was caused by lengthy delays in appointments of new governors to

replace the retired ones during the first period (especially in 2003–2004 and in 2007–2008—see Table

4.1.A1. in the Annex). At the end of 2003 and 2004 there were no sitting governors in 7 and 6

provinces, respectively, and in 2007 and 2008—in 8 and 9 provinces. After Xi Jinping came to power,

delays in appointing governors decreased: during that period not more than two provinces had no

sitting governors at the year’s end.

• Governors experience appointment to the position of the province party secretary at a

relatively high rate, particularly under Xi Jinping. The share of such personnel rotations rose from

10.3% in 2003–2012 to 15.2% in 2013–2019 (p= 0.000).

• “Honorific retirement” (appointment to a position of high prestige without real executive

powers) was relatively frequent during the periods studied. However this type of move fell from

7.7% during Hu Jintao’s period to a mere 3.2% under Xi Jinping (p= 0.000).

• The third most frequent outcome is transfer to the center with promotion to a higher-ranking

position. This pattern became slightly more common under Xi Jinping (4.1% vs. 3.5% but this

difference is not significant).

• A small number governors are appointed to positions to the center at the same rank (7 persons

during 16 years, or 1.4% on average) or same-rank appointments in a different region (5 persons, or

1% on average).

• Other outcomes for governors (resignation, retirement, demotion, accusation of corruption)

were rare.

The age data for governors (Table 4.1.2) shows that the average age of those governors who

“stayed in place” was practically identical in both periods—approximately 56 years old. However,

the average age of newly appointed governors grew by more than 1.5 years in the second period (from

55.7 to 57.3 years old – the difference is significant at the 0.00 level despite the relatively small

difference in means.) We return to this point below.

16

The average age of governors who were promoted regionally during the period of Xi Jinping’s

rule has also increased (by 2.3 years, p= 0.01). The same concerns transfers to equivalent central-

level positions (but this difference is not significant). The only important category where the average

age of governors decreased was promotion to central positions (this was observed in the cases of 9

officials). Under these circumstances, the fact that we found a greater than one year decrease in the

average age of governors transferred to honorific positions without real executive powers (‘honorific

retirement’) was surprising. Moreover, the average age of those sent into honorific retirement under

Xi Jinping (56.7 years old) was lower than the average age of newly appointed governors. It appears

that Xi is moving governors out to pasture earlier in their careers than had been the case in the past.

With respect to party secretaries, we can summarize the main findings as follows:

• Overall, we found lower frequency of turnover among party secretaries than among

governors—16.9% per year on average. This of course is partly due to the fact that there are simply

fewer opportunities for further promotion as party secretaries advance in the hierarchy. Nevertheless,

it is notable that turnover rose during the period of Xi’s rule to 17.1% as compared with 15.5% during

the Hu-Wen period (however this difference is not significant).

• The share of party secretaries who stayed in place at the end of each year was higher than

for governors (75.4% on average during 16 years) and decreased slightly from the Hu to the Xi period:

from 76.8% in 2003–2012 to 73.1% in 2013–2019 (approximately the same as the share of newly

appointed officials). (However, these differences are not statistically significant.) It is also noteworthy

that there were no more significant delays in appointment of new party secretaries in place of

dismissed ones under Xi such delays were practically eliminated. In particular, after 2012 there has

not been a single instance of absence of a sitting party secretary in a province at year’s end. We return

to this point below.

• The most frequent type of personnel transfers of party secretaries in both periods was

“honorific retirement” (9.3% during 16 years on average). However, the frequency of such transfers

has increased under Xi: 9.7% on average vs. 8.1% in 2003–2012 (p= 0.000).

• The second most frequent type of movement of party secretaries is appointment to a similar

position in another region. The share of such ‘lateral movements’ has grown slightly: from 6.1% in

the first period to 6.9% in the second period (but this difference is not significant).

• At the same time, the share of party secretaries’ transfers to higher-ranking positions in the

center has decreased materially. Under Xi, it was only 2.8% annually on average vs. 5.5% in the

period of Hu Jintao’s rule (p= 0.000).

• Another change typical of Xi’s rule is a noticeable share of party secretaries who simply

retired (5 persons, or 2.7% annually on average during the period under survey - versus 0% under Hu

Jintao’s rule; p= 0.001).

17

• After 2012, removal from the position in connection with investigation for corruption (often

followed by criminal prosecution and sentencing to long prison terms) has become a frequent

outcome for party secretaries. During 6 years under Xi Jinping the political careers of 4 high-ranking

regional party functionaries ended this way (compared to only two cases during previous decade

under Hu Jintao).

• Transfers of party secretaries to equivalent positions at the central level have become very

rare: only one person since 2013 vs. 3 persons during 2003–2012.

• Dismissals were rare (1 case in Hu Jintao’s period and no cases under Xi). Likewise there

have been no instances of demotion.

• Appointments are not evenly distributed across time. (See Tables 4.1.A2. in the Annex).

Most promotions and lateral movements have occurred in the years when CPC congresses were held.

However, under Xi this process started earlier and covered two years: 2016 and 2017.

Analysis of the age characteristics of party secretaries (Table 4.1.4) shows that the average

age of all significant categories of appointment (ie those who stayed in place, those who were

promoted to a position in the center or transferred to an equivalent position in a different region, and

newly appointed party secretaries) has risen under Xi: from 1.5 years for promotions (t test is not

significant) to the center to 5 years for lateral movements (p= 0.000) and more than 3 years for new

appointees (p= 0.000). The exceptions are ‘honorific retirements’ (where the average age fell by 0.6

years, as a result of which ‘honorific retirees’ were younger than the average for ‘new appointees’),

and transfers to the center without promotion (only 1 case in the second period). In the period of Hu

Jintao’s rule, party secretaries transferred to other regions were considerably younger than those who

stayed in place, whereas in the subsequent period the average age for both groups became equal.

However, although appointed party secretaries under Xi have tended to be older than those

under Hu and Wen, they stay in office for shorter spells. The average tenure of new governors and

party secretaries in the period of Xi’s rule has decreased significantly as compared to the period of

Hu Jintao’s rule (see Table 4.1.5) and note that there is practically no difference between Hu Jintao’s

and Jiang Zemin’s appointees as far as this criterion is concerned. The difference in average tenure

of Hu Jintao-era party secretaries and those appointed after Xi took power fell from slightly over 4

years to 2.12 years, a difference that is significant at the 0.0001 level. In addition, the numbers of

governors who had no prior ties to the region—ie “outsiders”-- have risen significantly under Xi’s

rule (see Table 4.1.7). The share of such governors under Hu Jintao (including those appointed during

Jiang Zemin’s rule) was less than 30%, but rose to 45.61% under Xi. For party secretaries, however,

this proportion fell. Under Xi, only 22% of new party secretaries had no previous experience of work

in the region whereas the rate 43.73% under Hu. This shift can be attributed to the change in the

criteria for appointing party secretaries. Whereas during the Hu-Wen period, 31 out of 48 appointed

18

party secretaries (or 65%) had previous experience of work as a governor, under Xi, 33 out of 37

appointed party secretaries (approximately 90%) had previous experience of work as a governor (p=

0.000). Therefore Xi tended to send outsiders to regions to serve as governor, then relied

overwhelmingly on those individuals to take regional party secretary positions. Moreover, in many

instances the governors were promoted to party secretary in the same regions where they had

previously served, which increased the share of new party secretaries with previous experience of

work in the given region.

Summing up our findings, we can highlight several points. In both periods governors (a lower-

ranking category) were characterized by a higher share of promotions or transfers to the center and a

small share of movements leading to the end of the professional career (“honorific retirements” or

dismissals) as compared to party secretaries. Under Hu Jintao, on average, 15.2% of governors and

6.8% of party secretaries were annually promoted or transferred to the center, and 8.4% of governors

and 9.0% of party secretaries ended their careers. However, in the period of Xi’s rule these differences

have become more pronounced. Since 2013, 20.2% of governors and only 3.2% of party secretaries

were promoted or transferred to the center. At the same time, only 5.1% of governors vs. 13.8% of

party secretaries ended their careers. It should also be mentioned that only one of the 5 cases of

removal from position in connection with accusation of corruption in 2013–2019 concerned an

official appointed under Xi Jinping, while all the others were first appointed under Hu Jintao. We

note the paradoxical finding that fact that the age of career termination (including “honorific

retirement”) under Xi fell both for governors and for party secretaries, while the age of new

appointees rose for both groups.

Presumably, these shifts reflect the process of personnel replacement—with Xi Jinping

sending into retirement those officials appointed before he came to power, even if they had not

reached the normal retirement age, and replacing them with others, presumably more personally loyal.

Moreover, as work experience as a governor before appointment to the position of a party secretary

is typical of the Chinese bureaucratic system, this process proceeds through the appointment of new

governors and ousting party secretaries into retirement. An indirect illustration of this assumption is

the fact of 20 out of 33 governors who became party secretaries under Xi Jinping were appointed

governors in 2013 or later.

Another important point concerns the higher average age of newly appointed governors and

especially party secretaries. Our data are insufficient to identify the reasons for this phenomenon with

any precision, but we can speculate that Xi Jinping tends to appoint to key regional positions people

with whom he has some personal connection. And such people are more likely to be found among

those who are closer to his own age.

19

At the same time, this trend (along with the decision to lift restrictions from Xi Jinping’s own

tenure of the post of CPC General Secretary) signifies an overt deviation from the rules and traditions

that have formed in the Chinese bureaucratic system since Deng Xiaoping’s time. Regular rotation of

personnel and compliance with the limitations on tenure in public service provided certain incentives

for the lower echelons of the bureaucratic machinery. But practical implementation of these

opportunities at the top echelons of the bureaucratic hierarchy requires regular opening of

vacancies—which becomes doubtful in a situation of ageing of the regional administrative leadership

corps and the abandonment of the former limits on the length of terms in office that have become

manifest since 2013. Were Xi Jinping to restore a Brezhnev-style system, where the top leadership

ages in place and blocks career mobility channels for younger officials, the result may be

dissatisfaction among party cadres and stagnation in the economy and society.

4.2 Russia

For Russia, we found the following main trends (see Tables 4.2.1-4.2.6):

• On average, newly appointed governors were 48–49 years old (younger than in China) and

average age hardly changed at all from the pre-2012 to post-2012 period. We also continue to observe

a wide variation in age among newly appointed governors in all periods: from 31 to 65 years old for

governors who assumed their positions before 2000, and from 30 to 69 years old for the third period.

This wide distribution of ages decreased slightly during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, but this did

not affect the median or mean. The difference in means is not statistically significant.

• The share of governors staying in their position every year is considerably higher than in

China. This measure has fallen only very slightly over time (from 89% in the first period to 86% in

the third period), whereas the average annual share of newly appointed governors has grown (from

10% in the first period to almost 15% in the third period).

• The chances of promotion for Russian governors are very low (0.3% in the first period and

less than 2% in the second and third periods) with a similar probability of demotion (while retaining

a place within the bureaucratic staff, albeit in a less important position): 1.0%, 1.5% and 1.8%,

respectively, for the same periods.

• The possibility of a transfer to other regions is almost nonexistent. There was only 1 such

case in the first period and 3 cases in the third period, accounting altogether for a 0.5% probability of

such transfers of sitting governors.

• High probability of a career end after serving as a governor. The sum total of the options

‘honorific retirement,’ ‘resignation without problems,’ ‘resignation with problems’ and ‘arrest’ was

7.6% in the first period, 8.3% in the second period, and 8.4% in the third period. At the same time,

the share of officials who left their positions with problems or who were arrested is growing (from

1.6% in the first period to 2.7% in the third period).

20

On the whole, there are only two indicators for which significant differences were observed

between the periods. First is the share of ‘outsiders,’ ie appointed governors who had no ties with the

region at the moment of their appointment (see Table 4.2.3). During Vladimir Putin’s first two

presidencies their annual average share among sitting governors was less than 7%. However, it was

much higher among newly appointed governors: 29% in the first period and 33% in the second period

(Medvedev’s presidency). But in the third period (despite the nominal return to the system of elected

governors) this percentage for ‘new appointees’ rose to 53% and exceeded 34% on average for sitting

governors. And this difference to the time period 2000-2008 is statistically significant (p= 0.0017).

The second point concerns average tenure (see Table 4.2.5). It should be emphasized that

formally in Russia, governor’s tenure is restricted to two terms; however, in practice, this rule is

regularly circumvented. A particularly notable example is the case of Evgenii Savchenko, who served

for 27 years as governor of Belgorod region. Appointed under President Yeltsin, he remained in

office until September 2020. Another five governors appointed during the first two presidential terms

of Vladimir Putin were also still in place as of the end of 2019 (when our data collection ended).

Despite these unusual cases, however, average tenure is becoming shorter. The mean tenure of

governors appointed under Yeltsin and who were still in office as of 2000 exceeded 11 years. In the

first two terms of Putin it fell to less than 7 years (p=0.000), and for Medvedev’s appointees (including

the actual tenure of officials who continued working at the end of 2019) it was approximately 5 years

(p=0.0023). In the third period the average tenure decreased even more. If we count only the

governors who were appointed in May 2012 and were moved before the end of 2019, their average

tenure was merely 3.5 years (p=0.0511). Moreover, the tenure of sitting governors from this cohort

was even lower at the end of 2019—2 years. We believe that these changes can be attributed to the

vigorous renewal of the governors’ corps in 2017–2018, when regional leaders were replaced in 20

regions in both years.

5. Discussion of Results and Conclusion

We compare two countries and two periods in each country. For the most part, the cross-

national differences identified in our previous research still hold. Specifically, Russian governors

still get their first appointment at a younger age (48–49 years old vs. 56–60 years old in China), stay

in place longer and for the most part are not moved from region to region. In contrast to China,

promotions of governors are quite rare in Russia; consequently, their principal incentive is to keep

their position. By contrast, cadre mobility, including promotion opportunities, is much higher in

China. Since the mid-2000s regional leaders have stayed in place for more than 10 years. Despite to

the higher average age of the regional leaders, the age variation at the time of their appointment in

21

China is much lower than in Russia. This is further evidence of the higher overall institutionalization

of the cadre management system in the PRC.

At the same time, several changes in these patterns have become more visible during the past

few years in both countries. These include the higher frequency of personnel rotation after Xi Jinping

came to power and a significant reduction of officials’ average tenure in the same position (from

approximately 4 years under Hu Jintao to slightly over 2 years under Xi). Personnel renewals under

Xi generally take the form of appointments of new governors among whom the share of ‘outsiders’—

officials without any ties to the region—has risen considerably, with a simultaneous decrease in the

opportunities for older officials (in particular, party secretaries) to be moved to the center, and a

higher probability of their dismissal, including getting fired in connection with accusations of

corruption. These tendencies support our hypothesis about tightening centralization in the Chinese

governance system, in that senior party officials with established power bases have fewer

opportunities to attain higher-level postings.

We believe that the tendency toward personalization of the appointments system in China is

manifested in the higher age of new appointees—by 1.5 years for governors and 4 years for new party

secretaries—along with a younger average age of retirement of incumbent officials. As a result, in

2013–2019 newly appointed governors and party secretaries were, on average, older than those who

were removed. This paradox can be attributed to Xi Jinping’s practice of appointing to senior

positions in regions people whom he personally knew and who were presumably more personally

loyal. And it is easier for him to find such people among those who are closer to his own age.

This approach gives Xi Jinping tighter personal control of the party and government and

logically complements the lifting of restrictions from his tenure as PRC President and CPC general

secretary. But at the same time these changes may undermine long-term performance incentives for

party and government officials, because the higher age of senior officials results in a lack of vacancies

and fewer opportunities for career movements of lower- and mid-rank officials within the

bureaucratic hierarchy.

Interestingly, similar tendencies are observed in Russia: growing shares of “outsider”

governors and falling average tenures of governors. Both trends make governors more dependent on

the Kremlin. But, in contrast to China, there was no clear breakpoint in these practices. They have

been steadily intensifying since early 2000s. The period of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency showed

no major departure from the general trend.

We laid out three hypotheses about tendencies common to both countries: first, that there

would be more frequent turnover of regional officials following 2012; second, that there would be a

rejuvenation of the regional corps of officials; and third, that there would be a higher percentage of

outsiders brought in to manage the regions.

22

Our first hypothesis is supported by the data. Length of time in office has fallen between

periods in both countries (newly appointed Chinese party secretaries’ average tenure fell from 4 years

to just over 2; Russian governors’ average tenure fell steadily across the periods, from 6.5 years for

those appointed during Putin’s first two terms, to 4.5 for Medvedev’s appointees, to 3.5 years after

2012. Consequently, we observe a significant increase in overall turnover.

Our second hypothesis was that the newly appointed officials would tend to be younger than

those they replaced. In neither country was this hypothesis supported. We found essentially no

change in average age at appointment in Russia, and higher ages in China both for governors and

party secretaries. For Russia, age appears not to be a significant criterion for appointment. In China,

Xi evidently regards experience as a crucial means to judge both administrative competence and

political loyalty.

Our third hypothesis—that more outsiders would be brought in both in Russia and China—

was supported by the data for two of three categories of officials. For Russia, the average number of

outsiders among newly appointed governors in 2000-2008 was just under 30%, but rose to nearly

50% after 2012 (See Table 4.2.3). For China, the number of outsider governors rose from about 30%

in 2003-2012 to about 46% in 2013-2019. Meantime the share of outsiders among party secretaries

fell in half, from 44% to 22%. This we explained by observing the increase in the pattern of

appointing governors as party secretaries in the same regions where they had served as governors.

We believe that the data are consistent with the thesis that both leaders have used cadre

management policies as a mechanism for consolidating personal power. The greater reliance on

outsiders undercuts opportunities for local notables to maintain their own local power bases, and the

higher frequency of turnover gives newly appointed officials fewer opportunities to build new ones.

We also see clear evidence that both leaders have sought to clean house and staff key regional

leadership positions with people who owe their advancement to the top leader. Consistent with this

line of reasoning is the fact that the age at which people are moved into honorific retirement has

actually decreased in China, as well as the fact that in China there are no longer observable intervals

between the removal of one official and the appointment of a replacement.

Major differences remain between the two countries, however. We see no evidence that

Russia has returned to the practice—common under the nomenklatura system—of grooming regional

officials for higher office by moving them from one region to another. In the Soviet era, this practice

enabled the central party staff to monitor performance and allowed officials to accumulate experience.

Russia continues to show no regular pattern of rotation across regions. Moreover, the age at

appointment continues to reflect a wide range of variation, and length of time in office remains highly

variable as well—albeit shorter in recent years. Most importantly, the observation that for Russian

governors, there are almost no upward channels for mobility remains true; instead, governors are

23

much more likely to be dismissed or demoted than promoted. In China, there appears to be a strong

“up or out” rule for governors. More of them are promoted under Xi Jinping than in the past.

However, for party secretaries, we see fewer opportunities for upward mobility. Perhaps Xi is

concerned about giving party secretaries not directly tied to him the ability to wield power at the

center.

In this paper we have not tested for the hypothesis that career mobility is related to

performance by regional officials in managing economic and social policy. As we noted above,

numerous empirical studies on China have shown that promotion opportunities have been higher for

regional leaders who achieved economic growth and higher investment rates. In Russia, on the

contrary, economic and social performance of relevant regions had no effect on governors’ careers.

The key factor for remaining in office in Russia has been demonstration of loyalty to the center by

delivering the required election results (Reuter and Robertson 2012). The Furgal case is further

evidence in support of this point.

The greater level of centralization and personalization in the cadre management system in

China could well lead to the weakening of performance incentives for regional cadres. This would

represent a further similarity to Russia. We plan to test this hypothesis in future research.

24

Tables

China:

Legend:

New: Newly appointed in given year

Stayed in place: Remained in same position

Lateral move: Appointment to another position at same rank (appointment as party secretary or

governor in another region)

Regional promotion: Appointed to a higher-ranking position at the regional level (as party

secretary) – only for regional governors

Promotion: Appointed to a higher-ranking position at the central level

Move to center: Appointment to a position at the central level without promotion

Honorary pension: Appointed to a position with honorific status

Fired: Dismissed from position

Corruption: Removed in connection with investigation for corruption

Pensioned: Removed from position without disgrace and without appointment to a new position

Demoted: transferred to a lower ranking position

Died: died in office

Table 4.1.1. Share of career movements of governors, by periods

(in percentage points)

Career movements 2002 2003–2012 2013– 2019

New 0.129 0.242 0.267

Stayed In Place 0.581 0.613 0.700

Lateral Move 0.032 0.010 0.009

Regional Promo 0.032 0.103 0.152

Promotion – 0.035 0.041

Move To Center 0.065 0.013 0.014

Honorable Pension 0.129 0.077 0.032

Fired 0.032 0.003 –

Corruption – – 0.009

Pensioned – – 0.009

Demoted – 0.003 –

Died – – –

Notes: ‘–’ if no observations

25

Table 4.1.2. Average age at appointment for governors, by periods

(in years of age)


New 57 55.5 57.3

Stayed In Place 55.1 55.9 56.1

Lateral Move 57 53.7 53.0

Regional Promo 47 54.9 57.6

Promotion – 55.2 53.0

Move To Center 56 52.8 56.0

Honorable Pension 57 57.8 56.7

Fired 62 54.0 –




Died – – –


Table 4.1.3. Share of career movement types, party secretaries, by period



New 0.323 0.155 0.171

Stayed In Place 0.613 0.768 0.760

Lateral Move 0.065 0.061 0.069

Regional Promo х х х

Promotion 0.161 0.055 0.028

Move To Center 0.097 0.013 0.005


Fired – 0.003 –

Corruption – 0.006 0.018


Demoted – – –

Died – 0.006 –

Notes: ‘–’ if no observations; ‘x’ if category is not applicable for the group

26

Table 4.1.4. Average age of appointment, party secretaries, by period

(in years of age)


New 55.1 56.9 60.1



Regional Promo x x x

Promotion 56.7 52.9 54.8

Move To Center 55 54.8 53.0

Honorable Pension 59 58.8 58.2

Fired – 53.0 –



Demoted – – –

Died – 56 –


Table 4.1.5. Average tenure of governors, by period

(in years)


New 1.75 3.75 2.15



Regional Promo 2 2.91 2.61

Promotion – 2.55 4.78

Move To Center 3.5 3.00 3.33


Fired 7 1.00 –




Died – – –


27

Table 4.1.6. Average tenure of party secretaries, by period

(in years)


New 4.7 4.08 2.12


Lateral Move 2.5 3.89 3.00

Regional Promo x x x

Promotion 4.4 3.94 3.17

Move To Center 3.67 2.50 4.00


Fired – 2.00 –



Demoted – – –

Died – 7 –


Table 4.1.7. Shares of governors and party secretaries who had no ties to the region, by

period (in percentage points)

2002

All officials in this year

2003–2012

Newly appointed

2013– 2019

Newly appointed

Governors 0.25 0.29 0.46

Party Secretaries 0.55 0.54 0.48

T-tests for ages of appointment, tenure of officials, and share of moves, by periods

Test 1. Comparing average age of appointment to first office, governors, by cohort, newly

appointed governors

Two-sided t test with unequal variances (in points and years of age)

Cohort No. obs. Mean age std. error std. dev. 95% conf.

interval

A 75 55.7 0.4 3.45 55.90 – 56.49

B 58 57.3 0.4 3.05 56.5 – 58.1

Combined 133 56.4 0.292 3.36 55.82 – 56.97

Difference -1.6 0.574 -2.74 – -0.46

t = -2.788

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0061

Notes: Cohort A: appointed 2003-2012; Cohort B: appointed 2013- 2019

28

Test 2. Comparing average age of appointment to first office, party secretaries, by cohort,

newly appointed party secretaries



interval

A 37 60.1 0.357 2.17 59.41 – 60.86

B 48 56.9 0.644 4.46 55.62 – 58.21

Combined 85 58.31 0.430 3.96 57.46 – 59.17

Difference 3.21 0.736 1.75 – 4.69

t = 4.3692

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0000


Test 3. Average age of all governors who “stayed in place,” by cohort



interval

A 190 55.9 0.7 0.97 55.76 – 56.04

B 152 56.1 0.075 0.92 55.95 – 56.25

Combined 342 55.98 0.052 0.952 55.89 – 56.09

Difference -0.2 0.10 -0.402 - 0.002

t = -1.95

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.052


Test 4. Average tenure in office, by period of appointment (Governors who were moved out of

the region) Two-sided t test with unequal variances (in points and years of age)


interval

A 78 3.64 .225 1.99 3.19 – 4.09

B 29 2.15 0.182 0.98 1.8 – 2.56

Combined 107 3.24 0.183 1.89 2.87 – 3.6

Difference 1.49 0.29 0.91 – 2.06

t = 5.1444

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0000


Test 5. Average tenure in office, by period of appointment (party secretaries who were moved

out of the region) Two-sided t test with unequal variances (in points and years of age)


interval

A 48 4.08 0.233 1.62 3.61 – 4.55

B 17 2.12 0.226 0.93 1.64 – 2.60

Combined 65 3.57 0.21 1.70 3.14 – 4.00

Difference 1.96 0.325 0.97 – 2.69

t = 6.033

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0000


29

Russia:

Table 4.2.1. Average age at appointment, by period


Putin 1st and 2d

Presidency

Medvedev

Presidency

Putin 3d and 4th

Presidency

New 48.24 48.22 48.72

Stayed in Place 53.93 54.13 53.42

Table 4.2.2. Share of career movement types of governors, by period:


Career movements Putin 1st and 2d

Presidency

Medvedev

Presidency

Putin 3d and 4th

Presidency

New 0.099 0.127 0.143

Stayed In Place 0.889 0.873 0.861

Promoted 0.004 0.019 0.015

Appointed Governor In

Another Region 0.001 - 0.004

Moved to Center Without

Promotion 0.003 0.006 0.009

Honorary Pension 0.014 0.039 0.030

Demoted 0.010 0.015 0.018

Left Without Problems 0.046 0.021 0.027

Left With Problems 0.015 0.020 0.018

Fired Rough 0.001 0.003 0.011

Died 0.011 0.003 0.002

Less Than A Year in

Office - - 0.006


Table 4.2.3. “Outsiders,” by period, as share of all governors


Putin 1st and 2d

Presidency

Medvedev

Presidency

Putin 3d and 4th

Presidency

As Share of Newly

Appointed Governors

0.29 0.33 0.53

As Share of Governors

Who Stayed in Place

0.07 0.23 0.36

30

Table 4.2.4.

T-test comparing share of outsiders among newly appointed governors, Putin 1 and 2 (2000-

2008) and Putin 3 and 4 (2012-2019)



interval

A 75 0.293 0.053 0.458 0.188- 0.399

B 96 0.531 0.051 0.501 0.43 - 0.633

Combined 171 0.427 0.038 0.496 0.352 - 0.501

Difference -0.238 0.075 -0.385 - (-0.091)

t = -3.195

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0017

Notes: Group A: Percent outsiders among newly appointed governors, Putin 1 and 2; Group B:

Percent outsiders among newly appointed governors, Putin 3 and 4

T-test comparing share of outsiders among newly appointed governors, Medvedev (May 2008

to April 2012) and Putin 3 and 4 (2012-2019)



interval

A 51 0.333 0.067 0.476 0.199- 0.467

B 96 0.531 0.051 0.501 0.430 - 0.633

Combined 147 0.463 0.041 0.500 0.381 - 0.544

Difference -.0198 0.085 -0.367 - 0.029

t = -2.3169

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0219

Notes: Group A: Percent outsiders among newly appointed governors, Medvedev; Group B: Percent

outsiders among newly appointed governors, Putin 3 and 4

Table 4.2.5. Average tenure of governors, by period (in years)

Yeltsin

Presidency

(Served in 2000)

Putin 1st

and 2nd

Presidency

Medvedev

Presidency

Putin 3d and

4th

Presidency

Number of Observations (1) 88 75 51 96

Age at The Year of

Appointment (2) 48.4 48.2 48.2 48.7

Moved (3) 81 67 33 25

Tenure (4) 11.1 6.5 4.5 3.4

Stayed In Place Till 2019 (5) 1 5 18 66

Tenure at The End Of 2019 (6) 25 12.6 6.67 2.58

Sum Of (3) And (5) 82 72 51 91

Tenure For (3) And (5) 11.27 6.94 5.24 2.81

Died 6 3 0 1

Less Than 1 Year in Office 0 0 0 4

31

Table 4.2.6:

T-test comparing difference of means of tenure (in years), governors

(in points and years of age)


interval

A 81 11.1 0.585 5.27 9.93 – 12.26

B 67 6.52 0.419 3.43 5.68 – 7.36

Combined 148 9.23 0.416 5.06 8.2 – 9.85

Difference -4.58 0.748 -6.05 - -3.1

t = -6.11

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0000

Notes: Group A: Average tenure of governors appointed under Yeltsin and serving as of 2000;

Group B: Average tenure of governors appointed under Putin 1 and 2 (2000 – 2008)




interval

A 67 6.52 0.420 3.43 5.69 – 7.36

B 33 4.45 0.404 2.32 3.63 – 5.28

Combined 100 5.84 0.325 3.25 5.20 – 6.48

Difference 2.068 0.662 0.76 – 3.38

t = 3.1247

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0023

Notes: Group A: Average tenure of governors appointed under Putin 1 and 2 (2000 – 2008); Group

B: Average tenure of governors appointed under Medvedev (May 2008 to April 2012)




interval

A 33 4.45 0.404 2.32 3.63 – 5.28

B 25 3.44 0.239 1.19 2.95 – 3.93

Combined 58 4.02 0.259 1.97 3.50 – 4.54

Difference 1.02 0.509 -0.01 – 2.03

t = 1.99

Pr( |T| > |t|) = 0.0511

Notes: Group A: Average tenure of governors appointed under Medvedev (May 2008 to April 2012);

Group B: Average tenure of governors appointed under Putin 3 and 4 (May 2012 – December 2019)

32

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Contact details and disclaimer:

Thomas F. Remington

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). International Center

for the Study of Institutions and Development. Leading Research Fellow; Department of Political

Science, Emory University (Atlanta, USA). Professor Emeritus.

E-mail: [email protected]

Andrei A. Yakovlev

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). Institute for Industrial

and Market Studies. Director.


Elena D. Ovchinnikova

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). International Center

for the Study of Institutions and Development. Research Assistant.


Alexander V. Chasovsky

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). Institute for Industrial

and Market Studies. Research Assistant.


Any opinions or claims contained in this Working Paper do not necessarily

reflect the views of National Research University Higher School of Economics.

© Remington, Yakovlev, Ovchinnikova, Chasovsky 2020

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